At Portici, having washed ourselves at the inn from head to foot in order to get rid of our blacksmith’s appearance, and having purchased a new pair of shoes and stockings each, we visited the Royal Palace and Museum with a view principally of examining the objects of art and valuables discovered in Pompeii.  The Royal Palace is called la Favorita, its architecture is beautiful; the garden or rather lawn which is ornamented by statues and enriched by orange groves extends to the sea.  The first thing that presents itself to the view of the visitor at the Museum of Portici are the two equestrian statues of Marcus Balbus proconsul and procurator and of his son, which statues were found in Herculaneum.  I forgot to mention that there is an inscription with that name on the side of the proscenium of the theatre easily legible by the light of flambeaux.

To return to the Museum at Portici, we were then shewn into a room containing curious morceaux of antiquity discovered at Pompeii:  a tripod in bronze and various other articles of the same metal; tables, various lamps in bronze, resembling exactly those used in Hindostan, wooden pens, dice, grains of corn quite black and scorched, a skeleton of a woman with the ashes incrusted round it (the form of her breast is seen on the crust of ashes; golden armlets were found on her which were shewn to us), steel mirrors, combs, utensils for culinary purposes, such as casseroles, frying pans, spoons, forks, pestles and mortars, instruments of sacrifice, weights and measures, coins, a carcan or stock, &c.

In the upper rooms are to be seen the paintings and fresques found in the same place.  The paintings are poor things, and in their landscapes the Romans seem to have had little more idea of perspective than the Chinese; but the fresques are beautiful:  the female figures belonging thereto are delineated with the utmost grace and delicacy.  They consist of subjects chiefly from the mythology.  I noticed the following in particular, viz., Chiron teaching the young Achilles to draw the bow; the discovery of Orestes; Theseus and the Minotaur (he has just slain the Minotaur and a boy is in the act of kissing his hand as if to thank him for his deliverance; the Minotaur is here represented as a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull); a Centaur carrying off a nymph; a car drawn by a parrot and driven by a cricket:  a woman offering to another little Loves for sale (she is pulling out the little Cupids from a basket and holding them by their wings as if they were fowls); a beautiful female figure seated on a monster something like the Chimaera of the ancients and holding a cup before the monster’s mouth (emblematical of Hope nourishing a Chimaera).  The arabesques taken from Pompeii and preserved here are very beautiful.  Here also are two statues found in Pompeii:  the one representing a drunken Faun, the other a sitting